Schoolfriends Jason and Marcus were deep in conversation.
“Are you sure about this?” Marcus asked.
“Course I am”, said Jason. “It’ll be a huge laugh.”
“But will he really see the funny side?” Marcus insisted.
“This is your Dad we’re talking about. I’ve never been impressed by his sense
of humour. I remember the time I was round your place when the TV was showing
‘The Greatest Comedy Moments in TV History’ and he stayed stony-faced through
every single one of them.”
“But he was laughing to himself inside”, said Jason.
“Really? So why, when Del Boy fell through the bar, was your
Dad’s only comment that the Trotters should have sued the pub for breaching
Health and Safety? And why did he insist that playing the notes in the wrong order
was just the same as playing all the wrong notes?”
“I’m telling you”, said Jason, “Dad loves a joke as much as
anyone, and practical jokes are right up his street. He’ll definitely see the
funny side of this one.”
“OK”, said Marcus, “so what’s so funny about being robbed of
your cash at the ATM outside Sainsbury’s – which is what you appear to have in
mind?”
“Simple”, said Jason, “Dad’s being going on for months about
how careful you need to be at cashpoints, and how he would never be caught out
by a sneak thief who tried any sort of trick on him. Well – I reckon we could
prove him wrong. It’s all right – we won’t keep the cash, obviously, but we’ll
show him that he can be caught out as easily as anyone.”
“And he’ll take that as a joke?”
“Believe me”, said Jason. “I know my Dad. He’ll be the first
to start laughing”.
So, the next day being Saturday, the two boys followed
Jason’s Dad down into town on the latter’s regular morning walk to do a little
shopping. Dad was one of those people who much prefer to use cash than plastic
when buying things over the counter, so his first stop was the Sainsbury’s
hole-in-the-wall cashpoint.
The boys had rehearsed their tactics very thoroughly, so
when the notes emerged from the dispenser, Jason shouted loudly “Oh my God,
look at that!” which made his Dad spin round, leaving Marcus free to grab the
money and run off round the corner.
“You seem to be going somewhere in a hurry, young man”, said
a deep voice.
The voice belonged to a police officer, into whom Marcus had
cannoned just round the corner. Marcus had not reckoned on an outcome like
this, and he could feel his legs going extremely wobbly as the policeman
grabbed him by his shirt collar.
“And what’s that in your hand? Nice crisp ten-pound notes if
I’m not mistaken. They wouldn’t by any chance have been stolen from some
innocent old person using the cashpoint, would they? Let’s just see if we can
find their real owner, shall we?”
So saying, the policeman dragged Marcus back round the
corner, where Jason’s Dad was standing next to the cashpoint.
Two things now surprised Marcus to a considerable extent.
The first was that Jason was also standing there. Why had he not scarpered as
soon as he himself had run off? The second was that both Jason and his Dad were
laughing their heads off.
“I told you Dad would see the funny side”, said Jason. “The point
is – do you?”
Marcus didn’t know what to say, so said nothing.
Jason’s Dad turned to the “policeman”. “Thanks for playing
your part so well, Brian”, he said. “It sounds as though you made an excellent
officer of the law for our little prank. Now I suppose you’d better clear off
before a real policeman turns up”.
© John Welford
Part 1: The True Bit
After a short break in Berlin my son and I returned by rail to
our home in Leicestershire.
The first train took us from Berlin to Cologne. The journey
was notable for keeping perfectly to time, arriving at exactly the right time
in Cologne after a journey lasting more than four hours. We therefore had no
problem with making the connection for the next leg of the trip, from Cologne
to Brussels.
However, that was when things started to go awry. Shortly
after starting out, the announcement was made that the train would make an
additional stop at Düren, which is a town between Cologne and Aachen. A later
announcement said that everyone would have to leave the train at Düren and get
on a train that would be on the opposite platform. All seat reservations would
still apply on the other train.
As our train arrived at Düren another train was approaching
at the adjoining platform from the opposite direction. The two trains stopped
at almost exactly the same time. We all duly got off our train – as did the
passengers who had just arrived on the other train.
We then swapped trains. When everyone was on board, the two
trains set off back the way they had come, carrying a fresh set of passengers.
There was no explanation given as to why this took place,
and there seemed to be no reason why two trainloads of passengers, travelling
between Germany and Belgium, should have to do what they did.
Odder still, from my point of view, was the fact that I just
finished reading Christopher Isherwood’s novel “Goodbye to Berlin” and had
started on his other “Berlin” novel. The title? “Mr Norris Changes Trains”!
Part 2: The Fictional Bit – One Assumes!
So, what possible explanation could there be? Here is a
possible – albeit unlikely – scenario.
Fritz, a train driver working for Deutsche Bahn, had a
problem. He lived with his wife in a small flat in Cologne, and regularly did
the run between Cologne and Brussels, where he sometimes stayed overnight so
that he could drive the early train back to Cologne. He was supposed to spend
these nights at an approved hotel, but had recently got very friendly with a
young lady, named Yvette, who had her own flat in Brussels. He had therefore
got into the habit of staying overnight with her instead of at the hotel.
This arrangement had worked very well for around a month,
with the girlfriend in Brussels knowing full well that Fritz had a wife in
Cologne, but the wife in Cologne being in total ignorance of the girlfriend in
Brussels. As long as this situation continued, the happiness of all three of
them would be maintained.
But it could not last for ever.
Things went wrong when Yvette, unknown to Fritz, made her
own visit to Cologne to see Louise, an old schoolfriend who had done very well
for herself and now worked as a senior controller for Deutsche Bahn. Yvette
wanted to tell Louise about her new boyfriend, and she did so at a café not far
from both the Hauptbahnhof and the Cathedral.
“His name’s Fritz”, said Yvette, “He’s a lovely guy. Tall,
blonde, very well-spoken. He works for your company as a train driver - you
might actually know him.”
“We’ve got more than one driver named Fritz”, said Louise.
“He could be one of several.”
“I forgot to mention”, said Yvette, “his eyes look a bit
strange. His left eye is blue but his right eye is brown. I don’t think I’ve
ever come across that before.”
“In that case”, said Louise, “I know exactly who you mean”.
And so did the woman sitting at the next table whose
attention had been drawn to the conversation of the two friends the moment she
overheard the name Fritz being mentioned. As soon as Yvette had got up from her
table to go the Ladies, the woman went over to where Loiuse was sitting.
“The next time you see my husband Fritz”, said the woman,
“You can tell him from me that if he ever comes near me again he’ll get a lot
more than he bargained for. If he wants to live with that trollop in Brussels,
he can do so, but I’ll be chucking all his belongings out into the street as
soon as I get home”.
She then walked off, presumably to go home and start packing
Fritz’s things.
Louise had no idea whether Yvette knew that Fritz was
married or not. Yvette sounded so happy and it might well destroy her if she
found out that her new boyfriend already had a wife in Cologne.
However, Louise was a resourceful person and she had a
solution to the problem, which she could do given her professional capacity as
an arranger of train movements. When Yvette came back, Louise excused herself
in turn and made some urgent phone calls.
She arranged for the train that Fritz was due to be driving
to Cologne that evening to reverse direction at Düren, which is where it was due
to cross with the Brussels-bound train on which Yvette would be travelling.
When she phoned Fritz to tell him, he was shocked by the
news that his marriage was now in tatters, but very grateful to Louise for
sorting things out. The prospect of facing his irate wife when he got home was
not one to savour, and Yvette’s flat in Brussels sounded like a much safer
place to spend the night.
Louise also had to get the driver of the other train to agree
to the plan, which he was perfectly willing to do, being one of Fritz’s best
mates.
All the passengers would have to swap trains at Düren,
meaning that Fritz and Yvette would head to Brussels together, with Yvette
being none the wiser about what was really going on.
Louise’s next job would be to collect Fritz’s belongings and
take them to her own flat in Cologne.
She had always fancied Fritz. Getting Yvette to sit at the
table next to where Fritz’s wife always had coffee at this time had been the
only really tricky part of the plan.
© John Welford
Groucho Marx is reputed, almost certainly falsely, to once
having said “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it”. I
think I can echo that line many times over, but there were also evenings that –
if not exactly perfectly wonderful – were at least memorable.
One that comes to mind was when I was a young librarian
working at a college that has since turned into the University of Chichester.
In my student days at Bangor I had been very active in its Gilbert and Sullivan
Society, and was delighted when the equivalent group at Chichester allowed me –
as a non-student – to join their ranks.
After chorus appearances in The Mikado and Iolanthe I was
promoted in my third year there to a principal role when they performed HMS
Pinafore. I duly appeared for three nights as First Lord of the Admiralty Sir
Joseph Porter KGB. I managed to remember all my lines, including getting the
verses in the right order in “When I was a lad” shortly after my arrival on
stage in Act I.
In Act II one of my numbers was a trio with Captain Corcoran
and his daughter Josephine, who is reluctant to accept my marriage proposal,
mainly because she is in love with Ralph, one of the ship’s crew. However, my
only explanation for her coldness towards me is that she is dazzled by my
exalted rank.
I therefore offer the salve that “love levels all ranks” and
that she should therefore not imagine that being a humble captain’s daughter
means that she cannot enter high society as the wife of the head of the
Admiralty.
Josephine does not dissent from this view. If social rank
can be ignored when it comes to matters of love, then her devotion to a humble
“tar who ploughs the water” is equally legitimate. Hence the famous trio in
which everyone seems to be in full agreement despite arguing in opposite
directions.
The director of our production had the bright idea of
illustrating the tangled web by having the three of us swinging about on ropes
at various stages of the trio and getting our wires crossed almost literally.
He apparently imagined that it would not look out of place for three vertical
ropes to suddenly appear on the deck of a 19th-century Naval vessel,
presumably as pieces of rigging that had come loose for no obvious reason.
We were all young and foolish, and we reckoned that if it
got a laugh, why not?
I was not quite as young as my colleagues, but equally
foolish, so I suggested an extra piece of “business”. I thought it would be a
good joke for Sir Joseph to swing right off into the wings at the end of the
song, giving a loud despairing cry that would be followed the sound effect of a
huge splash. He – by which I mean I – would then stagger back on stage soaking
wet.
So that is what we did.
On the first of our three evening performances the stagehand
in the wings scooped a tumblerful of water out of a fire bucket and threw it in
my face. It got a reasonable laugh, but I doubted whether anyone more than
three rows back would have seen any wetness on me at all. I therefore asked the
stagehand to throw more water at me at the second show.
This is what he did. Instead of a glassful of water I got a
jugful. This was a distinct improvement, but it still wasn’t enough. More water
for the final night, please!
The guy in the wings was determined to get it right on the
night. Instead of scooping water out of the fire bucket, he – being quite a
strong lad - just picked up the bucket and chucked the lot over my head.
I don’t know if you have ever had two gallons of ice cold
water thrown at you, let alone when you are in costume and about to return to a
stage to deliver a couple of lines before you can escape, but I can tell you
that the shock is a considerable one.
On the plus side, the laugh from the audience was the
biggest of the night. As you can tell, that was an evening that I have not
forgotten.
© John Welford
At the end of the island where I live we are waiting for
John to come back. At the other end, which we don’t ever visit, they are
waiting for Philip. But we will see John back here long before they see Philip.
John is a legend. I suppose Philip must be too, but our legend is better than
theirs. That’s because ours is true and theirs is made up. I know this because
my grandfather said so. He has actually seen John and knows he is real, but he hasn’t
seen Philip. He thinks the people at the other end of the island made Philip up
out of their own heads, just because we had John all to ourselves down here.
Grandfather is now a very old man, and it was when he was only
a young boy that he saw John. It was at a time when huge ships, loaded with massive
guns, went sailing past our island. Some people came from other islands and
talked to our people about what was happening there.
It seems that on some of the larger islands people with much
lighter skins than us arrived in big metal birds. They wanted to stay for some
time, and they told the local people that they needed to attract much larger birds,
but in order to do so they would have to clear away some of the forest and build
a special track on which the birds could land.
This is what they did, and after the birds began to arrive,
and the people had built huts near the end of track and really nice huts for
them to live in themselves, all sorts of strange things started to arrive that
were taken out of the birds and into the people’s new huts.
These people didn’t seem to do any work. They didn’t grow
food or climb trees to gather coconuts, they stayed in their huts and the food
arrived inside the birds, or so it seemed.
Some of the local people helped with unloading the birds,
and what they unloaded was called “cargo” by the newcomers. It was wonderful
stuff. They had boxes outside their huts that made whirring noises, and when
this happened the inside of the huts were brightly lit, even if it was long
after dark.
They even had boxes in their huts that cooked their food or
kept it fresh during hot weather. One or two of them would go round the island
in metal boxes that moved all by themselves.
This went on for some time, but one day all the people got
into the metal birds and flew away, taking all their cargo with them.
Grandfather told me that some people on other islands wondered
if there was a way of getting metal birds to come down and bring some cargo for
them. What they did was go into the forest and cut down some of the trees in a
long strip, just wide enough for a metal bird to land on. They built some huts
at one end of the strip, just like the ones that the white-skinned people had
built so that the cargo could be stored there before it was taken to their own
huts.
Do you know, I’m just not sure if any cargo did land there,
however much the people raised their hands to the sky and asked a metal bird to
come down and land on their forest strip.
But we have something a lot better on our island. We have
John Frum. At least, that is what everyone calls him. He came to our island
once, a long time ago, but I’m not sure if he came in a metal bird or on a
boat. He stayed for some time and then he went away again, but everyone just
knows that he’ll come back one day. And when he does come back, everyone will
be so, so happy because he’ll bring lots of cargo with him for everyone.
Grandfather has told me lots of stories about John Frum and
all the wonderful things he did. He made people better when they were ill, by
making them swallow tiny round pieces of food. If they did this for a few days,
all their pains went away.
I have heard lots of other stories too, but I can’t be sure
that they were all true. It was said that he could make a dish of water taste
like anything you wanted it to be. When it was hot in a pot on the fire, he
would drop some powder into it and it would smell wonderful and taste like
nothing anyone had known before. John Frum had said that all the people where
he came from drank this every day when they got up and it made them work so
much better. He called it Caa Fie.
Some people said that John Frum could fly in the air and
turn himself into birds or bats. Could he? Well, if he could make Caa Fie, who
knows what he could do?
We had John Frum all to ourselves. At the other end of the
island they say had a visit from a tall handsome man in a white costume who
said his name was Philip. They asked him who he was and he said that he was the
husband of a queen from a far distant land, and that this queen actually owned
the island. That sounds very odd to me. If he was the husband of a queen,
surely that would make him a king? It doesn’t add up. That’s why I think they
invented him.
No, we’re far better off with John Frum, who’ll come back
one day and bring lots of Caa Fie and other things with him. I asked Grandfather
one day why he was called John Frum. He said it was because he had said – in a
very funny voice that dragged out all the vowels, that he was “Jahn Frum
Armorica” or something like that. Nobody was quite clear what the last word was
– it might have Ormerocaw or Hamvericore or almost anything. So everyone just
stuck with what they could agree on, which means that we are all now waiting
for the return of our very own John Frum.
© John Welford
